Sewage, mailboxes, and inmates - in 3 hours or less

Monday held the weirdest random events I have ever had in the space of just a few hours.

I got home to a toilet bowl with low water in the bowl. This is not a good sign. I flushed. The water rose. And rose. And rose. And thankfully did not over flow. I plunged and plunged and plunged and absolutely nothing happened.

When Clint got home and he mentioned casually - "Hey maybe that's why the stuff was in the bathtub." "the stuff?" "You know, when the sewer backs up?"

I stupidly decided to check the other toilet downstairs. The water was, of course, low, I flushed. The water rose. And rose. And rose. And did over flow.

I had Clint go out to the cleanout and open it up. Last time, this cleared the pressure and the whole shebang was over. He said we had standing water at the cleanout. Bad news.

So I called the water district. They said they would send someone out. Good news. 2 hours later he showed up. Bad news. It was on their side and they fixed it. We're flushing with the best of them now! Good news.

In the midst of this, the doorbell rang. Two little kids asked me if I wanted a brick mail box. Well, heck yeah - but the last guy quoted me $850. $850!! So I was skeptical. Clinton had gone to pick up Landon, and since we had already bought the material to build the metal mailbox, I didn't want to make this decision on my own. I mean, his price was $200. I hemmed and hawwed, and in the mean time Clinton arrived home. I summoned him out to the front yard and as soon as the words "for two hundred dollars" were out of my mouth. He was all "do it!" DO IT! DO EEET!


We speculated as to why this guy could be so much cheaper, we decided maybe he's a bricklayer and out of work because of the housing market. Whatever, he's probably an illegal alien and I just dashed any 4th grade hopes I had of becoming president. I'm sticking with my first story though.

He said he'd be back Tuesday afternoon to do it...but he wasn't. So I guess we'll see. I didn't give him any money or anything, so if he just disappears into thin air, it's not like I lost anything out of the deal.

Also, while waiting the 2 hours for the water guy, we recieved about 6 bazillion phone calls from strange numbers and pay phones. 4 from a pay phone at the Harris County jail. And 2 from a woman who seemed to believe that Ina or Ezza lived with us, despite the fact that I kept telling her she had the wrong number. The second time, she didn't hang up before saying "Damon, she says I have the wrong number." Poor Damon, asked a girl for her number, can't exactly remember her name, and totally got given a fake number - he just can't catch a break. 1 was from the guy they were sending out - which we were expecting, so I had to keep answering all of them, because who knows what number the sewer guy is going to call from.

Anyway, for the jail house calls (which showed up simply as "PAY PHONE") I did not accept the charges, so I hope no one I know is in jail. If it was you, sorry about that, but honestly, if I'm the only person you can call, you've got bigger issues.

One time a long time ago, I did accept charges from a similar call - mostly because it was during a time period where it was a real possibility that someone we knew may have been in jail. (It was not them.) But the guy gave me some sob story about being in an accident, having a warrant, being arrested and something about a baby, and how he'd dialed the wrong number and they wouldn't let him make another call, so could I please call his mother - her extension was *72, but I had to dial it first. He was pretty convincing, he probably should be an actor or salesman. Nevermind that I have some experience using this new fangled telephone-talky machine, and I'm pretty sure there's no way to dial an extension before you dial the number, so I didn't. Thank goodness I'm suspicious like that - because when I looked it up on the internet I figured out exactly what he was up to - *72 makes it so that he can make calls from his number and charge them to my phone bill. So I was glad to hear they added this to the little recording "you have a collect call from an inmate at the Harris County Jail. If an inmate asks you to make a call pressing *72, this is a scam and may result in excess charges to your phone bill..." I worried about the little old ladies who would get his call and just do exactly as he said.